Kristopher Ryan Centre in Secunda in dire need of your help

SECUNDA – The Kristopher Ryan Centre needs your help.

The centre focuses on being a safe and stimulating area for adults with intellectual challenges and only receives a small subsidy from the Department of Social Development.

“What we need most of all is funding.

“If we have funds, we can employ teachers, teaching assistants and caregivers, which will make an immense difference in the lives of our students.”

The centre serves 45 students currently who are divided into two classes, but there is only one qualified teacher, Ms Nozipho Mkoko.

She explained what her day looks like: “The students have breakfast and then we divide them into two classes.

“One of our caregivers, Ms Agnes Matarise, helps me with one of the classes.

“She is wonderful and very good with the students, but I am still responsible, so I have to run between classrooms to make sure all the students get the right attention.”

Ms Mkoko has a passion for her work and believes the students in her care have the right to receive the best possible further education.

“Many of our students can not read or even write their own names when they arrive here, so we decided to begin with the basics.”

Once the students have a grasp of basic reading and writing and if they are physically capable, they can go into a skills development workshop and be taught a trade such as welding or carpentry.

“We do not have the facilities or the personnel to have our own workshops, so we are reliant on one of the local contractors to allow our students into their training groups.

“Ideally however, we would like to have volunteers who come to us and spend one morning every week and maybe teach the students how to garden, work in our bakery or do welding or woodwork.”

The centre has a bakery and with two bakers who bake biscuits, it does bring in revenue, but it is still underused.

“If there is a pensioner or someone with a passion for baking who can come and teach our students and bakers new recipes and help get the bakery back on its feet, it can be a wonderful opportunity for our students to develop a new skill and be creative.”

The centre has enough space for outside activities and vegetable gardens, and there are various buildings that can be cleaned up and renovated to become workrooms.

Some of the infrastructure needs maintenance, including the roof that needs to be sealed, and the fixing of the ceiling in the bakery/main hall, paving or gravel in the parking lot that floods when it rains and leaves large pools of mud, and more toilets and bathrooms.

At present there are only three toilets for nearly 50 people.

The centre also has a feeding scheme and feeds its students twice a day from one small kitchen.

There is a room that can be used as a sickbay, but it needs to be furnished and supplied.

The two classrooms that are being used, need chairs, desks, flooring, a black board and educational decor.

They have complied a wishlist which includes a fridge, a chest freezer, a microwave, a large urn, a blackboard, office supplies, a desk for the admin office, a laptop or desktop computer, collapsible goal posts or volleyball nets and other sports equipment, extra ovens for the bakery, and donations of food for the feeding scheme or ingredients for the bakery.

Because so many of the students are new readers, the centre can also do with old books up to a primary school level, and old magazines that are still in a good condition.

“Most of all, we want people to come in and spend time with the students, teaching them a worthwhile skill or helping them to express themselves.

“This must be a place of upliftment, not only a place where the students come to eat and sit around until 2pm.”

If you would like to become involved, you can contact the centre at 017 631 1716.

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